Monthly Archives: August 2010

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At first glance, I think WTF? On reflection though, we’ve got this happening all over the DCU already. In any given month there are as many as 4 Flashes running around with a couple of ancillary speedsters to boot. Green Lantern has an entire Corps spanning the Universe. Batman himself has effectively been building an army of mini-Batmen since the first Robin. In recent years it’s become hard as a reader to believe there could still be that much crime in Gotham. Huntress is running around, Catwoman frequently combats crime; Dick Grayson is in and out of Gotham. The Birds of Prey, Azrael, Slam Bradley, Tim Drake all fight Gotham’s crime too. How is Gotham not the safest city in the DCU? With so much caped activity and so many “legacy” characters in general, why shouldn’t there be a couple of Batmen running around?

I’m not going to spend time speculating the logistics of it, but it might be confusing having two guys called “Batman.” Do we go from THE Batman to A Batman? Maybe it does take something from the character. We’ll see.

In the mean time, head over to ComicsAlliance; Chris Sims examines the history of Bat-imposters and the probable meaning of a Dynamic Duo of Batmans or Batmen.

Well, this is somewhat disappointing. I’m only picking up one comic this week — GORILLA MAN #3 — which wraps up that mini. There’s not much more harping on Jeff Parker, Agents of Atlas, or Gorilla Man I can do at this point. I haven’t gotten to read last week’s comics yet, focusing instead on working my way through Joe Casey and Ashley Wood’s Automatic Kafka, which I’ve been trying to complete for several years now.

Since I have the opportunity (and it worked so well last time), I’ll throw today’s post open to comments: what should I check out?

The last time I did this I got some killer recommendations from Friend of the Blog Larry, who suggested DMZ and Nightly News among others. I’m on the 6th DMZ trade now and it just gets stronger with each collection. I’ve only been able to track down the first issue of Nightly News, but so far it’s incredible: everything Brian Wood’s Channel Zero promised to be but didn’t deliver on.

I say this every week, but what are YOU looking at? All suggestions will be considered, but anything coming out this week that has a $3 cover price will probably get picked up. Fire away!

Of note today is the release of papers and notes from Dr. Frederic Wertham. Having acquired the papers years ago, the Library of Congress as seen fit to share this information with the public…or at least the section of the public interested in key moments in comic history.

Kurt Busiek’s opinion of the state of comics has leaked. I feel bad, because these were obviously things said in confidence, but he’s not wrong. It’s curious, because Mark Waid has also recently and publicly sworn off superhero comics from the Big Two. He and Busiek put out most of the readable comics during the 90’s drought, so to see the two of them on the same page means its worth paying attention. That said, I couldn’t disagree more with his opinion on Jonathan Hickman. I’m pretty sensitive about padding and found Hickman’s FF run to be wonderfully paced and bursting with big ideas.

The wizard Shazam is charged with protecting mankind from the Seven Deadly Enemies of Man. Being so deadly, these occupy Captain Marvel and Shazam’s attention and time. What aren’t they watching? Which enemies of man have slipped by to plague our society?

438th Deadly Enemy of Man: Passing Gas in a Crowded Elevator

1927th Deadly Enemy of Man: High Fructose Corn Syrup

38th Deadly Enemy of Man: Over-relliancerelience use of Spell Check

9.34 * 10 ^56th Deadly Enemy of Man: Earworms (songs that get stuck in your head, not like in Trek II)

299th Deadly Enemy of Man: Confusing They’re/There/ and Their

19th Deadly Enemy of Man: Dressing Pets in Clothing

13th Deadly Enemy of Man: Furniture Royalty

142nd Deadly Enemy of Man: Toyota-thon

9th Deadly Enemy of Man: Insisting That Dane Cook Is THE Comic Genius of Our Time
93rd Deadly Enemy of Man: The Sudden and Needful Urge to Pee in the Middle of a Movie

45th Deadly Enemy of Man: Reshelfing Library Books in the Wrong Place So That No One Can Find Them.

It’s been a month since I reviewed books. I’m told that this is mostly due to incompetence and misunderstandings on the part of UPS. Books were shipped to Los Angeles instead of LA; boxes with tracking numbers disappeared and magically reappeared in Mississippi. Suffice it to say, my LCS has not been getting books regularly. I’ve been playing catch-as-catch-can trying to keep up on weekends. This was the first week in a while that I could walk in on a Wednesday and find new books. Not much out this week specifically though. Still, let’s take a look at the game tape and see how it turned out.

The last chapter in the current arc of Warren Ellis’ Astonishing X-Men is a major let down. After such an interesting and slow set-up with genetic monstrosities stolen from Beast’s secret files, the pay off wasn’t there. In all honesty, I should have seen this coming. Ellis has made it abundantly clear that he hates superheroes. He uses issue #35 to spew bile in the direction of the X-Men. Through the villain, Ellis rants for five pages (non-stop) about why the X-Men are hypocritical at worst and phony at best. It’s boring, and as Hannibal Tabu at CBR points out: the argument doesn’t make sense in a world where the Morlocks or guys like Beak have been X-Men. As offensive as the (lack of) story is the fact that nearly every other page is a house ad. Presumably this is part of the price we must pay for books to remain $2.99.

Batman #702 filled in more gaps between the fight with Dr. Hurt and Batman’s “death” at the hands of Darkseid. Given Batman’s drugged and abused mental state at the time, we do not get a cohesive narrative. For the most part, think of it as getting deleted scenes from Final Crisis. It’s not bad, but outside of the the confrontation with Darkseid and the following pages, it’s nothing really new. At best it’s sort of… meh.

Action Comics #892 continues Lex’s lust driven journey for a black ring. The story isn’t so great here, but we get some cool ideas and some great character moments for Lex and a couple of his flunkies. Cornell makes this worth picking up.

Sadly, no Muppet books this week, and I still have not read the all ages Infinity Gauntlet series.